OUR STORY

It started with a girl who dreamed of exploring the world, and unlocking people's potential... 

In 2006, our founder, Maeve Quigley, joined the Peace Corps in Thailand as an Economic Development volunteer, and was assigned to a rural village in Sukhothai province, where houses sat on stilts surrounded by rice paddies. Underneath nearly every house was a loom, or families carving beautiful wood pieces, and down the river was a village where the same families threw pottery in the same style as their ancestors of more than 900 years ago. 

Maeve fell in love with these meditative, ancient traditions, and spent more than two years learning ancient Thai and Lao craftsmanship, and exploring market opportunities to bring these traditional crafts to market. 

Following the Peace Corps, Maeve traveled the world working on economic development projects with USAID, and discovered the same problems rural artisans have world-over: rural communities are losing young people for lack of economic opportunity, rural craftspeople are unable to reach broader markets for their goods, and as a result, the continuity of traditional craftsmanship is threatened.

Meanwhile, industrialized markets in the last decade have begun to realize the crippling environment and human cost of cheaply-made manufactured home goods.

Maeve saw an opportunity in this golden age of technology to connect together industrialized markets that are hungering for meaningful home goods, with rural artisans who aren't able to access those markets. 

And thus, Home Geographic was born.